Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

Bastard0 writes "There are some new screen shots today from the new Star Wars Galaxies massively multi-player online game on " The pictures are looking really good. If the game is less boring the Everquest, then they may have a hit on their hands. Meanwhile I'm beta testing the diablo 2 expansion, and for the first time in like 3 years, I have 'CmdrTaco' as my nick in a sizable online system.

Graphics are purely client-side, it's not like each frame is streamed across the network. You could have a real-time raytraced scene or stick figures and they'd require the same bandwidth. The only time graphics and connection interact is when the computer is so overtaxed doing the rendering that you're dropping packets on the floor. In that case, a faster connection is better because you'll have a shorter wait before you get the next datagram.

Lucas Art's gaming division has matured a little too much for my taste. I'm all for exotic planets and stuff, but do you really want to encounter aliens with 4 breasts and a dick [starwarsgalaxies.com]?

There is some truth to what you say, but not entirely. The game is but a set of rules under which the players operate and gather around: It is something they _all_ have in common and something that ties them together to do something.

...However, that is not to say that the game itself isn't important. Players will find ways to enjoy themselves even in a very poorly done game; but with time it will impede, wear down, and otherwise destroy the communities it has created. I have seen this happen many a time, and usually those once players find out they really don't have all that much in common afterwards. Oh well.

The thing is, a game encourages doing certain things over others, and it helps shape the community that way. It gives patterns, ideas, methods, things for the players to _do_ or ways for them to think about what they're in. Essentially, bringing form to this mass of players that has come forth to have fun.

It's kind of sad since the MUD community has known all this for some time now, and most of the MMORPG designers that were out for the first few generations did all the newbie mistakes. (Or, in some ways, were forced to by management. Sigh..) Only now are they starting to understand, but they're dragging all of us through the mud in the process.

UO was the best of the lot at the first point, but it was screwed up progressively more as time went on. Oh well..

I think they're wise to do that, good for them. It seems to me that the alternative, to even give the slightest suggestion that they are interested what their fanatical following sends them, would give a tremendous amount of false hope to the many people who are heavily invested emotionally in their intellectual property. It would also bury them in email. The Star Wars fanbase is in my opinion way, way past the point (in gross fanaticism) where there's the possibility of a healthy two-way relationship. Please don't take this personally; it's more a reflection on the most vocal and arrogant fans that I've bumped into, and it's certainly not a problem unique to Star Wars (see any MMORPG).

Yerrrrs. Are you taking onboard that a MUD (replace with your favourite buzzword acronym) is defined by its community? EverQuest have gone psychotic with dictating how people are expected to play EQ - who you can play as, how you should play, what you can say. They're like the worst, most pig ignorant, egotistic GM you ever tabletopped with. I'd hate to see Star Wars go that way too.

Fair point there. I was talking about Lucas's policy in general. I really haven't read much on the subject, but the challenge of defining a play experience in an MMORPG is awesome and I'm sure good feedback is essential. Of course, the structure and degree of that feedback is the question. There are interesting ideas out there like A Tale in the Desert [ataleinthedesert.com], but who knows if they'll work out. Anyway, EQ's strange restrictions on naming etc. seem pretty silly to me, primarily because the time wasted imposing them could be spent on more useful pursuits.

Number four - xp should be given out for a number of situations, not just conquest in battle... Sell a hijacked
star destroyer get a million xp and the chance to become a rebel admiral.

Here's something I didn't see in the FAQ. How do they plan to do ship to ship combat, or getting from planet to planet? One of the coolest things about running around the starwars universe is the ships. I don't particularly care to play a jedi, but getting into the rogue squadron or trying to out run/fast talk imperials as a smuggler, would be really cool.

The title sequence for Battle for Naboo (wait til it's $15) starts with Jar Jar walking onscreen, and being crushed by the title. His cry of pain even sounds like "I'm sorry". I'll have to see about some sort of screen capture.

If the game is less boring the Everquest, then they may have a hit on their hands.

Gee, sounds like Rob is having a bad day/week/month. First he's advocating WinCE over PalmOS, using windows to play Diablo (Okay, maybe its wine/vmware), and now Everquest is boring. What Mr. Malda obviously needs is a quick shot of Prozac, provided free of charge thanks to Big Government and Big Business.

Well, that's just it. They do give people false hopes. They've made lots of promises and bailed out on them, disappointing a lot of the fans in the process. Many of the requests I've heard people make of them really aren't that absurd, but have fallen upon deaf ears. Hell, they already get bombareded with e-mail from people who don't read or care about their policies.

It just seems like such a copout... They rule the Star Wars story with an iron fist--many people I've known have gotten cease-and-desist orders from them for making add-ons. While they're certainly within their rights to control their intellectual property, it's very discouraging when they try to control something that's obviously become larger than just a story. It's part of our culture now, and like any popular myth, it has a tendency to expand.

George Lucas himself has applauded several groups that create parodies or derivative short films based on Star Wars. Why can't they extend the same courtesy to gamers who just want to have fun?

Good luck. LucasArts doesn't care about what people want; they even have a strict policy to throw out any sort of communications that contain ideas for their games. See subsection 4 of their terms of use [lucasarts.com].

They've been petitioned countless times, to no avail...and their attempts to show that they listen to their customers turned out to be nothing but back-patting sessions for themselves.

I'm personally rather excited about Neocron [neocron.com] right now--as I've been picked as one of the very first two hundred public beta testers. I should get my beta CD in a couple of weeks, then off we go!

Neocron is a cyberpunk/postholocaust first-person shooter MMORPG that's been in development for over two years and built up quite a huge fandom, even with no playable demos during that time. All indications are, it's gonna rock.:)--

Since when did lucasarts.com become starwars.com? Lucasarts is good in spite of this starwars crap they constantly churn out. The Maniac Mansion games were great, Monkey Island is God-like, Grim fandango kicked ass, and let's not forget Sam n Max.. *sigh* Where's the creative ORIGINAL stuff anymore?

It'd be great to have a push for a linux/unix port of this game NOW, instead of 6 months after it's been released. When it comes it'd be very very cool to have windows and linux on the same disc, so people don't have to buy a separate version.

This insightful reply points up the counterpoint to the obviously overreaching observations that I made -- in part, to make the point. I agree that a sucky game (in some measures) will ultimately kill a community. But the "game" I was referring to as unimportant deals with issues like "way-cool graphics," "size of the world," "presentation of plot and story," and "detailed physics." These things don't matter.

What matters is that the game be "deep" enough to sustain a long-lasting relationship with the players. Chess is a deep enough game. Tic-tac-toe is not. War in the East was a deep enough game, but way too complex to permit decent interaction. Moving from board games to story-telling, I note that the biggest, most important traits of a game design be this:

1) It not impede player-player interaction, and affirmatively encourages and rewards it;

2) It's mechanics are simple and malleable, so to permit evolution with the needs of the community;

3) It's game balance, particularly the issue of clarity v. depth, be as close to perfect as possible, and that the game evolve in accordance with (2) driven by this concern over all. No additions to the game should be made without focusing on this point.

The archetypal best repeatable multi-player game, combining Depth and Clarity, is a game akin to Diplomacy. The archetypal games for role-playing are the real-time, real-space games, such as those outlined at larpa's web site [larpa.com].

These games focus on the interaction and gaming experience more than on the game itself. Technology *IS* a serious impediment -- it gets in the way of the people-people communications. THIS is the key technological challenge of a networked multi-player computer game, not the game design or the prettiness of the screen. It gets even trickier for a massively multi-player game, however technology provides some WONDERFUL solutions to that problem -- I just have yet to see that done, let alone done well.

Anyway -- it is this challenge that makes the differences at the end of the day, not the packaging. Packaging gets folks in the door, but it isn't enough, not by a far cry. Gaming does require a game, but I will tell you this: a solid, interesting multiplayer variant of "rock, paper scissors," will entertain far longer than an on-line version of War in the East. FAR, FAR longer.

If the game is less boring the Everquest, then they may have a hit on their hands.

Don't you get it? The game doesn't matter at all! If you get 100 people together with the idea that they are going to have fun, guess what? They will have fun to the extent that the game DOESN'T GET IN THE WAY.

This is the lesson of the real-time, real-space role-playing business; of the entire fantasy-role playing game business; indeed, of the entire entertainment business as a whole. People do not have fun because you have MADE THEM to have fun, but because you have found a way to facilitate their own pleasures and enjoyment.

The biggest problem of most multi-player games is this: the computer gets in the way. The network gets in the way. And if there is TOO MUCH GAME, the game gets in the way.

The problem with most massively multi-player games is this: the community gets in the way. Unless you naturally break out the community into solid sub-communities with which people can interact, all you have is a complex game with really good AI's. Not bad for a complex game, but nothing like the potential of an interactive game.

People-people games are fun, exciting and interesting. When I used to gamemaster large real-space games at conventions, the lesson we learned was that the most important thing to do, both in game design and moderation, is to get out of the way. Let players interact, and interact well. Control them subtly only, and let their minds entertain one another.

That's the real deal: the game doesn't matter. It's important to some extent, of course -- in that it is the putative reason a community comes together to game. But the game itself isn't the thing -- the people are.

Turbine Entertainment has been pretty hush-hush about it, but it sounds as though they have a big chunk of the project completed.
There is a blurb about AC 2 being demoed here. [gamespot.com]
From other reports I have read, it appears they are looking at supporting both Windows and the X-Box. Sorry, probably no Linux clients.
In this interview [ign.com], they do discuss some of the cooler improvements they have in the works, such as having clouds form over a period of weeks into thunderstorms.

I wish I could find that great article by a well-known hard SF writer who slammed EpI for this (and other) reasons. One of the great things about the original movies, he said, was that anyone could aspire to become a Jedi. Old Ben even offered to teach Han Solo (who just scoffed).

Suddenly, with Episode I, you have to be born with the ability to {become a Jedi, inherit the throne, lead your people}. No fair studying and meditating; it's either the true blue blood or nothing at all.

Thanks! I had it bookmarked once, but lost it (don't know why). I couldn't even remember Brin's name when I posted that.

I posted a thank-you followup to/. earlier today under a different story, and it got marked Offtopic (politeness is now negative karma on slashdot; the Buddha is spinning in his grave). Let's see if this one gets Redundant or something.

This is standard practice in the film industry. They get so many unrequested manuscripts that they have to state that they ignore them, or they'll get sued when they release something similar to something that was submitted to them.

Acording to the SWG boards that is basicly how it will work, but with a very large element of chance when it comes to who can be a Jedi and is also tied closely to how your char behaves from the moment he/she enters the game. The idea is to not put a hard limit on how many jedi there are in the game and at the same time keep them VERY rare.

How did CmdrTaco manage to get both the Diablo II and the Diablo II Expansion betas? Does Blizzard give out betas to people who run geek websites so that they get free advertising? Or is he just incredibly lucky?

I had an old ISA SB16 in my dual celerons 2 years ago. I upgrade to the PCI SB Live and my framerate jumped 2x ! Why? Because the PCI bus runs at 33 Mhz compared to 8 Mhz ISA. (SB Live was using just a fraction of the CPU)

So while the orginal poster is incorrect about ping = frame rate, older hardware using less efficient protocols vs new hardware can make a difference.

It shouldn't doesn't matter, old ISA bus cards nowadays run off of a PCI to ISA bridge, which does run at 33 MHz. I should also point out that in addition to the speed of the bus, the width of the bus is important. PCI is 32-bit whereas ISA is 16-bit, so PCI can transport 133 megabytes per second whereas the ISA bus is limited to 16 megabytes\second.

My guess is that it was your CPU usage that went down because the SB Live has a more advanced audio processor that requires less CPU use, especially if you had advanced audio features enables in your game.

More likely they just took a bunch of shots from whatever FMVs they use. This seems to be the universially agreed upon method of marketing your games. The actual graphics you see for 99% of your game play will probably be slightly better than the original space invaders.

I certainly won't rate something over something else just because "everyone else does it". Hell, thousands of newbies and immature people (whatever age) is a reason NOT to play EQ anymore. Just the same reason I don't watch much TV either now.

Soon the marketeers will discover a crash in the curve and wonder what the hell went wrong.

I'm not interested in this because its Star Wars or a MMORPG. Thats fine and dandy but what really makes me happy is that they are not using a D&D based 4-6 attribute level advancement system. Woo Hoo! Finally online roleplaying might get out of the dark ages that pen and paper left years ago. I am so hoping that this will set a trend towards good points based roleplaying systems in future RPG computer games. Not that 3rd edition rules aren't a big step forward from the 2nd, but you're still stuck with character classes and the like.

As for the whole what will keep everyone from becoming a Jedi question, I believe the limiting factor is the cost. Anyone can become a Jedi, but to get to the point where it becomes practical and survivable is tough. Its a very costly character advancement path. Hence being a bounty hunter or a smuggler may be a much better choice.

Also from the faq, the answer to your modified question is "it depends" They state that you will have skill levels in things like blasters, and that as your character advances you can pick up skills like marksmanship and improve on them. The blasters in the original star wars were prefectly accurate, it was the storm troopers who couldnt hit the side of a barn. After all, these are lasers or some derivitive were talking about here, they tavel in straight lines, you just have to point it in the right direction, which is the characters job, not the games.

How come saying Worldforge is good merits +3 informative, and saying Worldforge is bad merits "flamebait". Two sides of the same coin eh. I still say pointing to Worldforge as a comparable alternative to Star Wars Galaxies, or UO for that matter, is laughable at best.

I did the beta test of EQ, and quit in a matter of hours...it was the most boring game I have ever played. I played UO for like 8 months and that was the best game, with fairly simple graphics. I think companies now are more concerned with graphics than gameplay. UO was more concerned with gameplay than graphics, and it was a huge it and still is.

A game that I think looks really sweet is Dawn. You can check it out at:

http://www.glitchless.com/dawn

Anyway, it is very disappointing to me that it hasn't gotten better publicity. It's the first MMORPG that I've seen that's going to (attempt at least) stress the roleplaying, and not the hack'n'slash zoning 1337 a0l d00d sell your gear on eBay crap. When you die, you die, sort of like Hardcore Diablo 2. You get experience for doing stuff in general, not just killing stuff. The world is bigger. If you don't behave in character gods might smack you down.

Don't get me wrong, Star Wars is sweet, and I have the highest hopes for this Galaxies Online thing. But think about the market Lucas is aiming at with his movies (9-13 year oldish).... those will be the ones that will likely dominate this community. It's easy to make a good game, but it's so hard to make a good community. Diablo 2 is a perfect example: I love the game, but god I can't stand the community. Korean flaming, yada yada yada... oh well, save that rant for another day.

I play EQ a lot but I can understand how it could be termed boring especially if you only played a few hours.

The biggest turnoff has to be the UI. It must be one of the suckiest user interfaces ever built. Awkward and ugly would describe it well with non-standard behaviour in just about every UI element. Even two years on is it still getting stuff it should have since the beginning (e.g. ability to buy stacks of goods) and unless you've got the Velious expansion your doomed to spend most of your life in the 640x480 "inventory" screen. That just stinks.

EQ also suffers from being "newbie" unfriendliness, where certain race/class combinations are almost impossible to start from fresh unless you're extremely determined. And I'm not talking about their EQ-rated difficulty but due to bad zone design. For example, certain classes have guilds 2 zones away from the newbie area (try finding them from the crummy maps in the manual), while others require walking through pitch black tunnels to zone such as Surefall Glade and Halas, or hunting in the perpetual gloom of Nektolus, Innothule, Feerott or Faydark. How a newbie equipped with a weak torch or naked is expected to put up this I don't know. I know I've created human rangers in the past and given up in frustration trying to get through that stupid tunnel.

Once you get past the "startup" frustration it does become a lot more fun. Personally I find the first 1-18 levels to be the most fun which is why I don't play much higher. There are enough zones and things to do to keep you busy in this time. In the higher levels you spend more time "camping" which has to be one of the biggest problems for higher level players. How anyone can be sad enough to "camp" for 6 hours to get some stupid item I don't know.

This kind of argument is pretty weak. Yes camping might mean you can socialise, but that's because there's precious else to do while you're waiting for spawn. Not to mention the fact that some camps are solo affairs where there is no one to talk to. If I want to speak to someone I can do it in real life down the pub or on IRC for free.

No, the real reason for camping is because of poor game design by Verant. EQ relies far too heavily on making items rare by putting them on infrequent spawns where you could wait hours or days and not see them. Spawn rates should be increased significantly or there should be alternative ways to obtain most items such as via quests. Unfortunately Verant doesn't want to work for its money - it's easy to edit the spawn rate field on some monster than develop a quest.

Well, the games will be designed to have a slower pace. Why? Because you pay a monthly fee. If you could do things quickly, you'd spend less time and therefore less money. It's also a way to let people without broadband play the game. At least with EQ, I can play as good on a 56k modem as a cable modem and DSL... not so with the Twitch Games like Quake, UT, etc.

before i get flamed, in "rebellion", you play as someone of Mon Mothma's position, directing fleets, planetary seiges, diplomatic talks, espionage, kidnapping and assasination missions throughout the galaxy, developing new technologies and ships along the way. This new game should remove the galaxy-wide stratigy and put you more in the shoes of someone like Han Solo, an individual changing his own path in small steps and bounds. More personalized, in a sense

i remember way back in the day when lucas arts put out an old game, "Rebellion", which, although at first, was a crappy game, once playing it in about 20 minutes, was maddeningly addictive. I remember borrowing it from my friend for "a night"....6 months later he had to pry it from my hands. I'd suggest picking up a copy and playing it to tide you over.

This looks to be almost an extension of the game, except that you (i'm assuming, if it's inline with everquest) play as one charicter and you play the part of a single thread in the intracate tapestry of the star wars universe, influencing it in your own miniscule way. The graphics look amazing, I sure hope those are actual ingame graphics....I've been dissapointed by previous releases of games. B&W had some amazing "screenshots", and almost delivered with that kind of detail. I'm just afraid that the sys req.'s of this game will prevent too many people from playing it.

I'm hoping to see this ported to the X box and PS2 in the future, that would definatly help the initial bit of having enough human players to make the world interesting and not boring.

I am pretty sure it is actually Raven Software and not Ritual Entertainment that is contracted to make Jedi Knight 2. Raven also made Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force. The press release is here:
http://www.lucasarts.com/static/pr/outcast.htm
-- Judas96"...don't take a nerf bat to a knife fight." - Joe Rogan, said on News Radio

Perhaps by "godly connection" he meant it would take some sort of divine intervention to help get a half-decent framerate on your average computer system... -- Judas96"...don't take a nerf bat to a knife fight." - Joe Rogan, said on News Radio

Number one - No ingame jedi bullshit, you were born a jedi you die a jedi no getting there inbetween. Maybe there should be a lottery for newbies,
every 1000 get a slightly higher amount of jedi skills.

to late, you can train to be a jedi, I read the FAQ and they make it sound like it will take a long time. Just as long as it's not to unbalanced, I don't want to walk in to a bar and ten jedi jump me for my boots, Jede can be cool if they make it really hard to get too, bottem line? no newbie jedi

Maybe they will at least let you maim him a bit, or kick him around... even if you cant kill him. He can always 'recover' from a solid beating, thus keeping the continuity of the universe. Maybe they could have jar jar wrestling as a mini game or something even. Of course, then you would have an empty universe because everyone would be camping the jar jar wrestling facility....

1.11 Will Star Wars Galaxies be a PC only game?
We are currently designing the game for the PC, but we haven't ruled out any of the other platforms. We will let you know of any definitive plans for a port of the game as soon as they emerge.

Well, I have a PC. It has 128 Megs of RAM, about 5G or more free hard drive space, a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, and a 500 Mhz k6-2 processor.

Since they specify that this is a PC game, does this mean I can run it after booting FreeBSD 4.3?

Seriously I am sick of this whole PC == Intel compatible processor based machine that is obviously running windows (I mean that is the only OS that runs on Intel boxen right?!). If you ask me my Mac is also a Personal Computer. Now if somehow I get a SunBlade I'll concede that it is a workstation and not a Personal Computer (even though I'd probably spend too much time tinkering with stuff on it to get anything useful done).

I used to think hardcore Mac users were the most arrogrant computer users in the world, because so many of them are convinced Macs runnning MacOS are better than everything else even though they haven't used much else.

I am convincved however that this is an error on my part.

I am now conviced that hardcore windows users are the most arrogant in the world by far, since they not only don't they know anything about anything else, but they expect everyone to be forced to use what they do.

Oh, I see in your world everyone who has a PC dualboots or perhaps even tho they don't legally own a copy of windows they must have pirated it.

This is the exact thing that disgusts me. That because you have a "PC" you must have windows on it or something like that.... This sort of thing is why I run into people all the time who think that since every PC runs windows (right?), that Linux or BSD must be something that runs on windows.....

Go ahead, don't take my word for it, run to your local CompUSA or Fry's, or where ever and ask people if a PC has to have windows to work. You will get responses like "All PCs have windows", I have even heard people who thought that windows was somehow _built into_ PCs.

And you wonder why Microsoft has a stranglehold on OEM's. Labelling games as requiring hardware (without mention of the software) makes people think that somehow the OS is built into the hardware... I used to work in retail, you'd be sickened by the misconceptions 80% of the public has. I just hate seeing this sort of thing added to.

Don't add to the public's misconceptions. If you cannot say something accurately, shut the hell up.

How come saying Worldforge is good merits +3 informative, and saying Worldforge is bad merits "flamebait". Two sides of the same coin eh.

Well, for a start, the +3 post I think you're referring to didn't say "Worldforge is good", it said "Worldforge is here [worldforge.org]." No value judgement was made, other than calling the people on the Worldforge team "nice" - which is my personal experience from interacting with them on IRC and in person. As for the "flamebait" post, I can't find the post you're referring to in this article - care to post a link ?

I still say pointing to Worldforge as a comparable alternative to Star Wars Galaxies, or UO for that matter, is laughable at best.

At present, you're probably right - it's an ongoing project, not "finished" yet, but moving forwards quickly. People said the same about Linux, gcc, and all those other good things once, you know...

Little bit of advertising, but the Star Wars Combine (swcombine.com) is a developing for-free (the administration and programmers are doing this voluntarily) SW Mud running under the "Fair Use" act, and the client program's source is opened....

Besides the fact that we owe our existance to a several ideas everyone here espouses to, it's a lot of fun (and even more so once it's up and running) for any RPers out there.

That limitation probably won't work, because people will just keep creating & deleting characters until the random generator gives them one that is well-suited to be a jedi. I bet with in a month the game will be crammed with 12-year old kids playing jedi knights.

Let's face it, a lot of people are bound to say "f* this. If I can't be a jedi, what's the point in playing it?"

BEN: And these blast points, too accurate for Sandpeople. Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise.

Well, he's at least right on the "precise" part. Precision doesn't necessarily imply accuracy. The fact that the stormtroopers consistenly miss implies there's a degree of precision going on. However, since precision generally requires skill, it's obvious that stormtroopers are, in fact, expert marksmen, but that the suffer from all having their gun sights misaligned.

I did the same thing - however I played UO for 1.5 years. (WAY too much time), but started from day one. the gameplay at the release of UO was far better than in the later days - as they imposed too many rules etc... it really killed the atmosphere.

Phlux, MYM, Draygor - HellFire Guild.

Lots of great memories from those days.

anyway - Galaxies looks like ti will actually be really good - as long as they allow for well done PVP combat. The reason is that people are so much more fun to fight than npc monsters. everquest was just a spawn-kill-wait-spawn-kill-wait game. LAME.

Imagine when they have a sizable force of imperial supporters, and a large rebel alliance force going head to head in space dogfight. BAD ASS.

(although I want to be on the rebel side, I like Tie Fighters better than x-wings... wonder if you can hijack other peoples ships)

Spaceship stuff is due in an expansion about 6 months after launch (so 2003) and even less details are available for it than the base game at present. I believe before this comes out transport between planets will be instantaneous but can only be done from the planets starport (and I expect you will have to pay for it too)

Bad news then bud - Jawa isnt one of the player classes, so you only get to beat up on NPC ones:-)
"Gee look at this cute little guy.... ZZAAAPPP...... OTINEEEEE!, Hey! you shot my brother Billi-bob, I'm gonna smack your ass now... (sound of flying furniture)..... got me one of them sand crawlers now, I'm gonna drive through a gas station!"
(That last part will only be funny to people who remember the film Convoy)

One thought I had?
Can the community interest be sustained at its current (fanatical - dont believe me? check out the discussion boards) level for over 12 months?
Sure when the thing goes public beta and/or some concrete details are released there will probably be reason to whoop and hollow (because the public hasnt seen the multiplayer demo the gaming press got invited too), but given the few screenshots and vague detail thats been released thus far (lots of 'we plan to' and 'hopefully's) I wonder if people wont get burned out and loose interest until almost launch date (especially with Galactic Command Online and Online Universe comming out before it (probably!)).
Dont get me wrong I'm excited, but 12 months (at least) is a long time. In that time we'll see Battlecruiser Millennium (its coming along nicely;-) ), then we'll have GCO and OU (read X-tension goes big!) admittedly the core audiences are different but there is alot of crossover in all 3 online titles (especially with GCO). I just wonder if they 'let the cat out of the bag' a bit early (probably to get user feelings and wish list stuff in right from the word go - having said that they've been going for some time now)

Number one - No ingame jedi bullshit, you were born a jedi you die a jedi no getting there inbetween. Maybe there should be a lottery for newbies, every 1000 get a slightly higher amount of jedi skills.
Number two - you should be able to in the least; pick your skills, your trade, and your secret society. There should also be a control panel of sorts to show you your personal possesions your greater posessions and the lot.
Number three - No getting promoted from XP UNLESS you pass tests. Nuthin hard just get quized from a master level character or greater (possibly AI) in the area that you want to advance. That makes for greater game play since this forces you to know what you are talking about. (especially good if you are a travelling merchant)
Number four - xp should be given out for a number of situations, not just conquest in battle... Sell a hijacked star destroyer get a million xp and the chance to become a rebel admiral.
Number five - and most important try to remember to always stay in character, this game is going to be very popular and alot of people will be playing that just dont know how to act in a rpg let alone one with alot of other people around.
rrdejay

Since you're coming from the side of an FPS, I will try to explain it this way.

First, there aren't any "levels" or "maps", or perhaps I should say the world is one huge level. There are things to attack and kill all over the world, there are things to pick up and use just like in an FPS. The world is persistent, and you can enter and leave the world, but it doesn't stop just because you leave.

The main difference is that you keep your character. When you log in and do stuff, you become better at using certain skills...like for example from an FPS, maybe aiming would be a skill, fast loading, resistance to damage. Every time you get into combat, you use skills, so you get better at them over time. So, an old experienced character with mediocre equipment could destroy a newbie with the best player in the world with the best reflexes and hardware and client cheat upgrades. What it does is make it less of a "player skill" game and more of a "character skill" game by letting you build up your character over a long time.

There are also other things possible. You could go out and mine for ore and take that ore and make items out of it. You could chop down trees and make furniture, if this has been coded. So, there are other kinds of things you can do if that's what interests you. If the game is set up correctly, you should be able to play without engaging in combat much at all, if you so choose.

The pace IS slower than an FPS, but when things do happen, like fighting a big monster, or seeing 10 people walking up to you to pkill you, you get the same kind of rush. The big difference is that if you die, you lose your equipment, maybe some of your skills, but you can work on those skills and get that equipment back, and your character isn't set back to absolute nothing. The learning curve is pretty shallow to start, but generally there's lots of depth and you can't possibly explore all the things to do in only a few hours. If they have it set up correctly, you should be able to get tutorials and introductory maps to starting shops and simple places to learn skills, but if not it can be difficult.

So, there you go...it's kind of like an FPS where there's one huge map representing the whole world, and people can enter and leave the map when they want, and as you kill things on the map, or do things, you get skills that improve that make your CHARACTER better, so that you aren't so reliant on your PLAYER clicking/aiming skill over time.

all of those were great games that did an excellent job of keeping the money rolling in while they were between movies, but now that he's back into the SW movie saga there are brand-names to be milked.

Hey, I remember when Tie Fighter first came out they had Gouraud shaded starships and it was frickin' awesome. And I think that it probably looks a little better than having to texture all that background space, not to mention being considerably faster.

I dunno...it could be almost an entirely different game. If you figure that they'll probably release the original with all the planets and allow you to travel between them via spaceports (just no in-space sequences), then you still get most of the functionality in the initial package. But then beyond that you could create a game where the space travel part of the game becomes a primary activity, allowing you to play a smuggler, or rebel/imperial pilot, pirate, mercenary, etc.

You could almost work in an entirely new game like X-wing vs. Tie-Fighter, only opened up to allow more players simultaneously and allow for a wider variety of ships. Imagine, you've managed to get a ship to transport you from Tatooine to Coruscant. On the way you pass by a dogfight where a merchant cruiser is being attacked by a band of pirates. You could jump in on whichever side you favor and be the heroic rescuer. Or you could just keep going and not worry about it. Or perhaps you could save the merchant ship and then be offered a reward or future employment with the merchant company (perhaps only to be swayed in the future by a pirate gang).

Or perhaps you could make a career as a pirate-hunter, bounty hunter, or even repo man who specializes in hunting down starships. You could have an opportunity to take out PK's and other (even high-level) characters/NPC's without having to worry about him having twice the XP and mana points that you do, because it would all come down to your ability to actually dogfight in a sim-like environment. No worries about whether you've got enough skill points to take someone on.

You really could make an entire other game with a MMO space combat sim that integrates into SWG. That would be sweet!

Let's face it, a lot of people are bound to say "f* this. If I can't be a jedi, what's the point in playing it?"

This is true. Game developers always have to delicately balance fairness, gameplay balance, and player interests. Hopefully they will design a lot of other equally interesting professions. Otherwise we'll be stuck with 100,000 Jedis complaining about how there's too many Jedis in the game.

Of course, the Jedi is just pretty much like the mage class in most fantasy-based MMORPGs. I rarely play the mages, I like being the brute warrior type myself. And there are plenty of other people who don't play mages because they find elements of other professions more interesting. So hopefully this will be the same with the Jedi class. If you look at a game like Ultima Online, people play non-mages (or non-warriors or whatever) because EA has made it similarly rewarding to play other classes. As long as they can do that with SWG, they ought to be OK.

That was a problem with the old Star Wars MUDs that I used to play. Everyone wanted to be a Jedi, which isn't exactly true to the image of the series. One solution I saw was that everyone had a class (like figher or trader) but could also become a Jedi. I didn't think it was a good solution, but I can't think of any good solution.

Can Joe Blow go and buy this at Walmart, and still be able to play against the computer with no net connection?

Nope. Its an MMORPG. Like Everquest or Asheron's Call. No single player game.

How much is this going to cost? or is it one of those servers that it costs to connect to?

Probably about the same as EverQuest or Asheron's Call -- $50 for the game (at first, will drop to $30 or so quickly), and approximately $10 per month in subscription fees to connect and play.

The graphics look kick @SS, but, how will it look on my P2 400 with Voodoo3?

Probably like (plain old) ass. But oh well, there's only so much that can be done with a P2/V3.

Do you have to play an actual character from Starwars, or can you create your own (ex. Slartibartfast, or something)

You HAVE to play as your own character. The game features races that appear in the movie, but since its a huge online game, not everyone can be a real character from the movie. From what I've read, the movie characters will pop up but as non-player AI characters, or as admin-controlled characters.

Is every character in it played by someone, including Shop keepers, Drunks, etc?

Doubtful, I'm sure lots of the characters you encounter will be AI controlled, as in other online RPGs.

How expansive of a universe comes on the cd?
Everytime you go to a new planet, do you have to download maps?

From what I've read the initial game will be pretty big. I'm not sure whether they will use the Asheron's Call model of expansion (free downloads every month that make the world bigger) or the Everquest method, which forces you to buy expansion packs at $20-$30 a pop. Probably the latter since its worked fairly well for them in Everquest (this game is being developed by the same company, Verant/Sony).

I have been fan of Star Wars well before I can remember, the 1st movie came out when I was two. I have have been waiting for something like this game for a terribly long time. Of course I have also been wating for a MMORPG with a Super Hero Theme as well, but hey who cares about that?

Anyway, the only issue that I have with the game is that it is not planned on being like Neverwinter Nights in the aspect that everyone can create their own stories and run their own servers. Of course I understand that the game is grander in scope than just about other MMORPG that is currently in existence and it would more than likely tax the heck out of anyone's home built server.

Regardless I would still like to be able to put into existence some of the grand stories that I put together when my friends and I were younger and had the time to spend the entire weekend playing the Star Wars Role-Playing Game.

Even though there are a few things that I dislike about the game, I will more than likely still be one of the first to line up to buy a copy, like I did when the original movies were rereleased with the extra footage.

One more gripe than I am gone. What the heck is with releasing the interstellar travel portion as a dang expansion? Don't they think that they will make enough money with releasing the whole game for 59.99 and then charging 10 bucks or whatever a month? This greed thang is just a little to much for me.